


the end of the world, or the last thing i see

by dragulamutual



Category: OMORI (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-good ending, Spoilers, not a happy one folks, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28729875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragulamutual/pseuds/dragulamutual
Summary: sunny tells the truth. hero doesn't take it well.
Relationships: Hero/Mari (OMORI)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 142





	the end of the world, or the last thing i see

**Author's Note:**

> title from the ghost of you by mcr because i'm an emo little bitch and always will be <3

Sunny breaks the news at 8:37am. 

Hero knows this because he’s spent the morning sitting by Basil’s bed checking the clock every minute, as if something revolutionary is going to happen the next time the hands pass twelve. He’s been out a few times - to grab another bottle of water for Kel from the vending machine, twice, and once to get himself a shitty iced latte from the Starbucks in the hospital foyer that was more water than coffee and did next to nothing to keep him awake. Mainly, he’s staring at the clock, and at Basil, who is as quiet as he’s been for the past four years, and laying with a deep red bruise around one eye. 

8:35 - Basil wakes up, asks for a drink. Kel passes him the half-full bottle he was holding, Basil takes a sip. Aubrey waves, half-hearted, from the chair she’s perched on.

8:36 - Nothing much. Another lap of the clock face. He looks at the hands that kept going round and round in circles, steadfast, completely unaware of the situation, then down at his own, white-knuckled and shaking. He looks at the wall. He looks at Kel, bouncing up and down on his toes, full of nervous energy. He looks at the door as it opens, and as Sunny walks in. 

8:37 - ‘I have to tell you something.’

He doesn’t stick around for much longer after that. 

He turns left straight out of Basil’s room and ignores the sound of the door slamming behind him as he walks down the hall, his ears ringing. There’s a door at one end that leads him to a staircase and he decides the energy it’ll take to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and walking up it is as good a distraction as any right now, and so that’s what he does, slumping against the handrail, telling himself that the only thing that matters right now is staying upright and getting to the top. 

The wind on the rooftop is strong and cold, and it almost knocks him back down the staircase. He slides onto the floor, back against the concrete, and laughs himself almost sick at the irony. 

_God._

He remembers - vaguely, but it’s there - _screaming_ at Kel about a week after he first found out. All he’d done was make an offhand comment about Hero’s cooking, but it was _exactly_ something Mari would have said, and all of a sudden the only thing he could feel was white-hot rage and the rolling pin he was holding went flying across the room. The dent it left was still there, but his mom had hung a painting over it - he remembers her holding him as he cried, rubbing soothing circles on his back the way he used to do to Mari when she was frustrated, and laughing softly that she was glad Kel hadn’t annoyed him while he was cutting vegetables, or the situation would have been ten times more lethal. 

He didn’t visit Mari’s grave for _four years._

He’d learned to repress the guilt, and he had pills for the nightmares, and it had taken a while, but he’d learned to stop flinching every time he saw a jump rope at a kids’ playground or walked on a floorboard that creaked at just the wrong volume. Moving out was helpful, and coming home was hellish, but it had gotten easier, and his parents made a point of pulling him aside and telling him how proud they were that he was doing so well. The emotional wound was still there, but it was healing. 

And it was all for nothing, because Sunny had just walked into that room with a huge bag of salt and poured it right in, undoing all four years of progress. 

He curls up into himself on the roof and cries, his body jerking with the sobs, his arms scraping against the concrete. There’s something vicious inside him that wants to take every second of the nauseating guilt he’d felt and shove it into that hospital room so they’ll suffocate on it. The worst part, he knows, is the fact that they almost definitely have already. He doesn’t know which is worse - his sleepless nights and days of horror, wondering whether there was always something he could have done to save her, or Sunny’s years of solitude, probably beating himself up into oblivion over a mistake he couldn’t ever reverse, or Basil’s regret, having to watch everyone mourn and contemplate a lie he’d created at _twelve._ He can’t be mad at them - but he _is,_ he will be for as long into the future as he can let himself see. The thought makes him sick. 

He stands up, shakes his head in the wind, grabs the stone railing on the edge of the rooftop and looks onto the road. He knows the aftermath maybe better than anyone, knows it’d be so horribly unfair to put everyone through that _again_ . His thoughts are manic and clouded. He misses her so, _so_ much. It’s still early. He looks down at his watch. 

9:04 - The cars are loud on the streets, and he thinks about everyone in them with their own tiny lives, completely clueless to the crushing feeling in his chest, the tightness in his throat. 

9:05 - He wonders how Kel took the news, and Aubrey. He wonders if they’re still in the room, if they’re talking it out. He wonders how Sunny is, and if Basil has enough energy to contribute.

9:06 - He remembers that wondering has never done him any good. He tries to calm down. It doesn’t work. 

9:07 - He glances over the edge. It’s a long way down. 

**Author's Note:**

> ironically, i left this pretty open-ended for a post-ambiguous ending resolution fic. take from this what you want - i have my thoughts, i'll let you have yours.  
> i needed something to show how the gang reacted to the truth about mari. started with hero because i love pain!  
> this could be the first in a series but don't count on it. i don't trust myself not to fuck up kel and aubrey's reactions.  
> i'm @marispicnic on twitter if you want to scream at me about how we didn't need any more sad omori content <3


End file.
